During the production of train parts, the manufacturer is responsible for making sure it conforms to the STI. The approval process then plays a central part. And it should be notest that the European Railway Agency also tries to make sure that those rules are fair and don’t impact on market openness. Equipment that meets the STI is able to go everywhere, excepting a few country-specific rules. The rules of creation and approval of train parts are becoming ever-more similar, many of them being described by Continent-wide texts (notably the Technical Specification of Interoperability Locomotive and Passengers, or STI Loc & Pas): from the performance level of the brakes to the notes of overhead warnings, everything has been thought out. Since 1922, the International Union of Railways was founded, and has played a huge role in the standardisation of train parts. Gauge width, rather fortunately, hasn’t either. There are a few train parts that have remained similar since the very beginning of the rails: train coupling hasn’t evolved much at all, for example. In a sector where responsibilities are pretty fragmented, there are multiple manufacturers and with the growing need for interoperability, what rules must new trains respect and how do you ensure they remain compatible with the existing infrastructure? Having told you about the huge regulatory changes that have taken place in the rail industry over the past decades, now we’ll be tackling the specifics of the trains themselves. So by popular demand, here’s another season this is the third of four instalments.įollowing our beginners’ guides to buying trains and designing trains, this new season aims to help you better understand railway regulation in Europe, and thus everything Midnight Trains is having to reckon with before we can welcome you on board our trains from early 2024. Since the first edition of Midnight Weekly went out, we’ve run various series of articles allowing you to find out more about how we’re going about creating our ‘hotel on rails’ company (and you’ve lapped them up). A rail exception that proves the rule S03E03: The 12 stages of train approval
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